Charlotte_J wrote:It is a little over $ 100 (US) - do you think it is a good or bad price?

I like the tea a lot, but I am not so sure it is what they say it is or not!! Do u have any opinion Marshaln? About the tea - how is looks?

I do not like the look of the leaves, neither wet nor dry.100 US$ for an 80's Pu Erh is far too cheap to be of any quality (if it even is that old, which i doubt very much).

I think you would be much better off to spend the money on a young, or a semi-aged (5 to 7 years old) tea of known quality. So far every single affordable Pu Erh i have sampled over the net supposedly from the 90's or earlier has been a huge disappointment - either fake, or so bad quality that it was just a stale soup at best. An 80's tea for 100 US$ - sorry, but i have huge doubts.

theredbaron wrote:I do not like the look of the leaves, neither wet nor dry.100 US$ for an 80's Pu Erh is far too cheap to be of any quality (if it even is that old, which i doubt very much).

I think you would be much better off to spend the money on a young, or a semi-aged (5 to 7 years old) tea of known quality. So far every single affordable Pu Erh i have sampled over the net supposedly from the 90's or earlier has been a huge disappointment - either fake, or so bad quality that it was just a stale soup at best. An 80's tea for 100 US$ - sorry, but i have huge doubts.

May I ask which affordable puerh, that you sourced from the net, are you talking about?

apolon wrote:May I ask which affordable puerh, that you sourced from the net, are you talking about?

I prefer not to, as i do not want to name particular dealers here, which i would have to, as none of them are any big name teas. I have tried many dealers, and many teas. I haven't tried though old teas that would be way out of my price league (i would not pay more than 100 to 150 US$ at most for a cake - this is just my limit, and i better am patient, buy them younger and wait some years until they get older).

On the positive side - i have bought some nice inexpensive semi aged teas, in particular from Yunnansourcing. I just got 2 cakes of the now sold out 2002 Yiwu Ancient Spirit, as an every day Pu Erh, which is already very nice to drink, and cost 40 something a cake. I also got 2 cakes of 2003 Wu Chi Dao "Menku Zheng Shan" for 44 US$ a cake, which will in a few years be very nice, i hope. Both of those teas were stored for some years in a more humid climate, which accelerated the aging process. I would not buy these teas if they were stored in Kunming as the dry climate makes for very little change - i have tried ten year old Kunming stored teas which were still very green tasting. Also Red Lantern has some nice not too expensive semi aged teas.

Usually, when i like a tea after it is ten years old, i try to put one cake aside for long term storage, so that one day i will have access to 20 year plus tea of a quality i would not be able to afford to buy. I have a few already that are now up to 15 years old. A few more years...

Indeed, $100 does cause some disbelief. Your pictures are hard to assess - the sample size is too small, and requires touching, which I can't do, obviously, to evaluate the tea. I didn't think the wet leaves look that promising, actually. The colour is a little too uniformly black/dark for what it claims to be, but there can be large variations in pictures. Do they unfurl if you tried to unfurl them? Do they disintegrate?